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The Colonial Memory of the Western Sahara 3rd Edition

From December 05, 2012 until December 18, 2012

FULLY BOOKED On Tuesday December 18th, Casa Arabe headquarters in Madrid hosted this workshop with poetic, literary and cinema materials which took place at the Desert room, in two round tables.

The event was comissioned by José A. Rodríguez Esteban and Juan Carlos Gimeno Martín, professors of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Autonomous University of Madrid, supported by the Faculty they belong to. It took place on December 18th at the Ambassador’s Hall at Casa Árabe in Madrid (c/ Alcalá, 62).

To attend prior registration was requested. It had to be done by December 14th at 14.00, sending and E-mail to the address: seminario.sahara2012@uam.es. Registrations were confirmed by chronological order and the ones accepted got an E-mail stating whether they could attend to the whole workshop or the selected session. FULLY BOOKED.

The workshop gathered a round table of different kind of experts (up to twenty guests), who exchanged ideas on the given topics.

Spanish transition towards democracy entailed an agreement to look forward and enable therefore a coexistence framework in a highly polarized country. This pact had a great success but it left behind many unsolved issues. One among them, the role Spain played in the Western Sahara, a territory still nowadays undergoing a conflict, due to the weakness of that period and the forgotten acquired responsibilities.

After the workshops which focused on Post-Colonial Approaches (I) and Relations between Military and Academic Memory (II), this third edition plunged into the poetic, literary and cinema resources which have been shaping a group of speeches which, from the traces of the past lead us to the present of this memory.

To find where the common points between both mentioned speeches are it is required to face the actor who have been shaping or using those essential lines in both approaches. Without comparing both discursive forms, the timing and the objectives conforming the whole plot, the approaches would seem to have an independent and own life, but this would hide the nexus which unavoidably produce the backbone of the different faces of the same reality.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM


10.00 OPENING SESSION

Eduardo López Busquets, director general of Casa Árabe
Margarita Alfaro Amieiro, Deputy Vice-chancellor of Institutional Relations and Co-operation, Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM)
Javier García González, Deputy Dean of Students and Cultural Activities
Juan Carlos Gimeno Martín and José A. Rodríguez Esteban, professors at the UAM and directors of the workshop

11.00-14.00 FIRST SESSION. Between propaganda and fascination for the desert: films and documentaries on the Western Sahara.
Lecturer:
José A. Rodríguez Esteban, professor of Geography at the UAM: ‘Indoctrinate Consciousness, Recall Memory: Documents on the Western Sahara.’

Chairing:
Juan Carlos Gimeno Martín, anthropologist
Miguel Ángel San José, editor
José María Elósegui Ichaso, documentalist
Francesco Correale, historian

16.00-19.00 SECOND SESSION. Poetic Consciousness and Literary Experiences: Memory Resources.

Lecturer:
Andreu Navarra Ordoño, professor of History of the Autonomous University of Barcelona: ‘Sand and Remorse: the Western Sahara within the Contemporary Spanish Memorialim.’

Chairing:
Ramón Mayrata, writer
Alberto López Bargados, anthropologist
Bahia Mahmud Awah, poet

19:00. CONCLUSSIONS